Tuesday, November 07, 2017

IWF President Carrie Lukas & Other Neo-Racist Conservatives

Exclusive: Charlotte Hayes secretly made virulently racist remarks to another Washington Times employee

11/08/2017

In a prima facie complaint to the District of Columbia Human Rights Commission, the conservative Independent Women’s Forum was charged today with rank anti-Jewish bias for illegally barring Washington Gadfly Evan Gahr from their November 15 star-studded banquet headlined by White House counselor Kellyanne Conway.

IWF president Carrie Lukas, vice-president Amber Schwartz and IWF editor Charlotte Hayes were repeatedly told in private or quasi-private emails from Gahr that banning him from the dinner--just as they banned him from their 2013 joint event with National Review--would be blatantly illegal under District and federal law.

The exclusion is discrimination in public accommodations based on religion and illegal retaliation for protected activities--namely his prior lawsuit against the IWF’s fellow travelers at the neo-con Hudson Institute for religious discrimination, following his dismissal, under Bush White House pressure, for denouncing Christian Right/Heritage Foundation co-founder Paul Weyrich for saying the Jews killed Christ.

But IWF officials, with the insouciance, condescension and lawlessness that classic Southern racists displayed toward proud black men who they felt threatened their power and prestige, ignored the detailed entreaties from Gahr asking to attend the event.

The right-leaning journo explained in considerable detail that given multiple legal exigencies here dating to his 2001 denunciation of Weyrich, the exclusion, absent the articulation of a legitimate nondiscriminatory reason, would be blatantly illegal.

So either give me a ticket or a non-discriminatory reason for the exclusion, OK?

They did neither.

Carrie Lukas and Amber Schwarz and Charlotte Hayes apparently figured, just like Southern racists who relied on secrecy, that they can get away with such blatant discrimination because Washington Post media blogger and reporter Erik Wemple is not writing about Gahr and he only has 230 or so Twitter followers.

This attitude bespeaks considerable ignorance about American jurisprudence, hostility to civil rights laws and the same kind of contempt for the American Way that many liberals, leftists and elite reporters often manifest.

IWF is also guilty--like the classic white Southern racists--of what this reporter calls “pretext free discrimination.”

“We don’t serve coloreds here.”

That is an assertion not an argument. It is descriptive but bereft of an explanation.

It begs the question of why don’t you serve them?

Well, because they are “coloreds.”

Similarly, IWF has been banning me from their public events since 2013 but to this day has not provided any reason for doing so.

“We don’t allow Evan Gahr at our event.”

Why not?

Because he is “Evan Gahr.”

Gahr is just as much a threat to their power and prestige as black students were at segregated Woolworth’s lunch counters.

IWF officially enjoys tax-exempt status as a nonpartisan research organization. Their whole public persona, as defending free expression and robust debate against intolerant feminists and liberals, is impossible to square with their acquiescence with the Hudson Institute firing him for denouncing Christian Right anti-Semitism in 2001.

And their fellow travelers at Daily Caller doing the same thing in December 2016.

Wait.

Doesn’t it sound incongruous for somebody to get fired in 2016 for what happened in 2001. Especially because at the Daily Caller in 2015 his investigative reporting in 2015 on the little-noticed trial of then MSNBC host Ed Schultz implicated the president of the cable channel in perjury and led to Ed’ ouster. He became an industry pariah--running a superPAC out of a UPS store before Vladmir Putin hired him for his American television station. At the Daily Caller in early 2016, Gahr’s investigative reporting prompted a congressional investigation of th Department of Homeland Security for firing and illegally smearing an ICE whistleblower. But then months later on December 7, 2016, publisher Neil Patel, with full subsequent support from co-owner Tucker Carlson, fired him for what happened in 2001?

It’s hard to think of another Washington whistleblower who got fired twice--by the same people!--for the same thing.

But remember: the whole Weyrich fracas is an open matter. It was never settled, legally or journalistically, like most Washington controversies. Conservatives say that Muslims need a reformation to disentangle the religion from terrorism and extremism. Conservatives need their own reformation to disentangle themselves from Christian Right anti-Semitism.

To this day, not a single prominent conservative, other than Linda Chavez, has condemned or reproached Weyrich for his anti-Jewish broadside. In addition to IWF, Gahr has been barred by National Review publisher Jack Fowler, a pre-Vatican II Catholic, from attending NR events that are open to the public. And presumably writing for the magazine; his NR articles included excoriating the black basketball player Dennis Rodman. But going after a white Christian got him blacklisted by National Review. Star writer Jonah Goldberg even did his best to help Hudson fire him and aided senior fellow Michael Horowitz in the harassment of his father to shut him up.

The backlash in 2017 is particularly curious because in 2002 Weyrich went to the Holocaust Museum with Evan Gahr to show he regretted the pain his remarks caused Jews.

Weyrich refused a request from his former detractor to put out a press release, which may have garnered considerable press coverage about the visit. The Greek Melkite Catholic said it was a purely personal visit for him and he would issue a statement afterwards. (Greek Melkite Catholics are distinct religiously from Roman Catholics but are ultimately under the authority of Rome.)

Plagued with just about every health malady somebody could have, except cancer, and still have a heartbeat, Weyrich delayed doctor’s visits so he could keep the arranged date.

Afterwards, he jokingly referred to himself as “an ex-demented anti-Semite.”

Got that, everybody?

Conservatives are still Borking and blacklisting Evan Gahr for calling Weyrich a demented anti-Semite 15 years after he admitted to being one. This is reminiscent of Communists in this country refusing to condemn Stalin even after Khrushchev denounced his crimes.

Charlotte Hayes, for whom this reporter wrote from 1999 to 2001 at the personal recommendation of IWF founder Ricky Silberman, told Gahr in 2002 shortly after he sued Hudson for firing him for denouncing Paul Weyrich for saying the Jews killed Christ that he could never write for her again. This makes the dinner ban, concurrent with denial of employment, blatant illegal retaliation for protected activities. In addition to discrimination based on religion. And discrimination based on disability since she accused him of having psychiatric problems.

“Take your meds.”

Conservative Racial Dictatorships and Double Standards

Of course, it was standard modus operandi of the Communist Party USA to impute mental instability to political opponents. For some strange reason all of my obvious mental problems went unnoticed by Charlotte Hayes and conservative during the 10 years I was doing “hit pieces” for them on liberal blacks, feminists and gays. But suddenly I was accused of having a psychiatric problems when I went after a white christian for anti-Semitism instead of a black Christian named Jesse Jackson.

That bespeaks some very ugly and telling racial standards on the right’s part.

It is well to note that Charlotte Hayes , a Mississippi native, is more than a neo-racist and guilty of more than racial double standards.

Charlotte Hayes is just a plain garden variety white Southern racist.

When I was a reporter for Insight Magazine, sister publication of the Washington Times, Charlotte was the gossip columnist.

My Insight colleague, Steve Goode, a West Virginia native, really sweet man and great writer and reporter, kept telling everybody in the newsroom how horrified he was whenever he had lunch with Charlotte (presumably in the Washington Times cafeteria.)

Goode said that Hayes would make blatantly racist remarks to him, assuming that as a fellow Southerner from an earlier era he would really dig them--even though she couldn’t talk that way to other folks not from the South.

But Goode found her casual racism revolting and told everybody about these lunches repeatedly. Charlotte can’t deny any of this now. And she can’t dismiss these charges of conservative racism--stipulations really--as left-wing character assassination. Like conservatives normally do; sometimes with justification.

I am the Jewish Whittaker Chambers.

The ex-communist broke ranks with the paper and exposed Alger Hiss, the epitome of the liberal Washington establishment as a Communist, who was in the same Party cell as him. Nobody could refute the charge from Whittaker. And Hiss was eventually convicted of perjury for denying the charges under oath.

I exposed the co-founder of the Heritage Foundation and the Christian Right, “one of the founders of the contemporary conservative movement”--to use the WaPo description--as “a demented anti-Semite.”

Meet the Heterosexual David Brock

I was a golden boy in this insular conservative world for 10 years--adored for my “hit pieces,” which combined investigative reporting with Christopher Hitchens-esque writing, on pretty much every liberal imaginable. I was “a right-wing hit man” to use Media Matters founder David Brock’s famous description of himself before he broke ranks. But I am not gay so I was not, like Brock was, something an outsider, who conservatives felt uneasy with and guarded with. Nobody was guarded with me. They adored me.

Longtime AEI magazine editor Karl Zinsmeister once said to me, Evan, you’re so conservative it gives me an erection. Then about one month later, he dismissed me as a columnist after Special Assistant to the President Tim Goeglein, complained to him about me, at the behest of Karl Rove, incited by OMB general counsel Jay Lefkowitz, the notorious apologist for Christian Right anti-Semitism who famously said in defense of Pat Robertson, “a little anti-Semitism is good for the Jews.”

I witnessed everything and know really embarrassing secrets about some of the biggest names in the DC conservative world. Stuff that undermines their credibility and can’t given my background be dismissed as liberal bias and character assassination. This includes gay bashing; the same folks who claim their opposition to gay marriage is not bigotry privately call gays “fags.”

Stay tuned for the dirty little secrets (to borrow the famous phrase in a different context of longtime Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz, another neo-con apologist for Christian Right anti-Semitism) of David Frum, the highly-regarded speechwriter for President George W. Bush

When there are no cameras around Frum is nothing like his public persona. His wife, Danielle Crittenden, was editor of the IWF publication, the Women’s Quarterly, for which I wrote.

The IWF ban is medically, personally, professionally and economically injurious to me. I need to go to these kind of DC events to get new stories and socialize because I am fighting major depressive disorder and social isolation in New York City makes it worse. In addition to the civil rights violations, the IWF is guilty of intentional infliction of emotional distress.

IWF and particularly Charlotte Hayes need to understand that Washington, DC in 2017 is not Philadelphia, Mississippi in 1962. We have laws against the kind of things they are doing now.

And contrary to what IWF president Carrie Lukas has concluded they need to follow them even if the Washington Post is not writing about the “uppity Jew” they are excluding from their dinner.

IWF is also carrying water for their fellow travelers at the Family Research Council, the nation’s most powerful Christian Right organization, with the ban. They don’t want Gahr asking them about the sexual harassment and retaliation lawsuit against FRC that he exposed for his WashingtonGadfly.com blog in 2012. The annual FRC convention, Values Voters Summit, this year was headlined by President Donald Trump. Virtually all GOP presidential contenders speak there.

The story about FRC firing a woman who complained her supervisor was emailing her “hi cutie” and inviting her to parties and telling her that young women on birth control pills are “whoring around” was picked up by the Huffington Post and quickly went viral.

The lawsuit, of course, entirely implodes the IWF party line that sexual harassment is just a feminist myth. IWF leaders are frightened about being asked about this lawsuit, just as they are terrified about being asked about Paul Weyrich.

But these are the people who purport to protect free expression and robust debate from the left.

The Independent Women's Forum is about as independent from the Republican Party as Pravda was the Kremlin.

When there are no cameras around, IWF cares about free expression about “as much as yesterday’s piss,” to use a great turn of phrase of my grandfather Louis Goldstock.

Adapted from Tucker Carlson, Christian Right/Heritage Foundation co-founder Paul Weyrich (who also coined the term pro-life), Louis E. Chimpstein & Me: the shockingly putrescent but patriotic story of how “everybody” in Washington acts when they think “nobody” is watching . . . but inspirational moral of the story, nobody is “a nobody” unless he acts like one and allows others to treat him like one